Equations of the Heart
by ze yellow dahlia
Summary: “Because… everything about you is irrational, Bella.” – Numbers, diagrams, graphs – you can have all the data you’d like, but, sometimes, it doesn’t always add up the way you’d expect.
1. Variables of the Unloved

**Geekward Shuffle Challenge**

**Pen Name: **ze yellow dahlia

**Link to FFnet Profile: **www . fanfiction . net / u / 2178565 / zeyellowdahlia

**Song Title: **"Linger," The Cranberries.

**Story Title: **Equations of the Heart

**Rating: **T

**Words: **7,152

**Disclaimer: **Not mine. I don't own Cranberries lyrics, or anything Twi.

**Summary: **"Because… everything about you is irrational, Bella." – Numbers, diagrams, graphs – you can have all the data you'd like, but, sometimes, it doesn't always add up the way you'd expect.

To my wonderful, lovely, beta/pre-read dolls, winterstale and stella luna sky, you're both adorable. Thank you so much. Everyone else, go read their stories. stella's Bare is to die for, and winterstale's 1982 is phenomenal.

Enjoy Numberward.

* * *

The summer before my planned sophomore year at Forks High had been stormy waters compared to a relatively harmless sea of the past. Renee was restless, and that meant a flight in to visit Aunt Tanya while she settled her divorce from my subdued father. I can't say that I was shocked when ma decided to set up her tepee in the dry heat of the Arizona sun. She had always liked the way it tanned her to a crisp, but it dried me out and put me in a funk.

I missed the green. Sun was my kryptonite, and I was the only pale face among thousands with leather skin, begging for melanoma and bathing in baby oil.

The first day of sophomore year had been like swallowing cold medicine. It was necessary, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth after I shuddered it all the way down. There were four times as many students in my class than my entire school back home. Before, everything was personal, but Phoenix was filled with fake. I blended in like the wallflower I now was, denying my mother's genes of charisma and fight.

I was defeated by the temperature, left for dead until Alice rescued me from drowning in vitamin D. Alice Cullen was my sister united under the adage of sunscreen saving lives and a banishing a future of wrinkles. We met on the second day over a shared bottle of SPF 95 in front of the lobby. To our surprise, we were bound by the same chemistry class and a passion for freckle-prevention. From that point on it was a picture of small, high school perfection. I loved her something fierce. She was a different type of wild than I was, but still saucy 'til the end.

If Alice was a mint julep, burning with a pinch of sugar, I was a chocolate martini, sweetly exotic yet strong, but we were both alcoholic all the same.

She took me under her wing, and I took her under mine. We traded our life stories, and it made us closer for it. Alice was an artist, taking bolts of fabric and turning them into something Versace would be proud of with an edge Betsey could look down on with admiration. She loved a boy who didn't know she existed, but wasn't ready to give up yet. I was the musician without a desire for company. I played the black guitar and crooned out classic rock and silly favorites in my spare time, knowing I would never get big, but hoping despite it all.

We spent every superfluous second together that we could manage that year. We survived the drama of penetrating gossip, and the ignorance of the opposite sex. She got her happy ending with the southern boy by the mid of May, just in time for the new trending summer to take us again in her steamy arms of unscheduled bliss. It had been a hard fought battle on both ends of Alice and Jasper's spectrum, but I had stood by, nursing her wounds when his rejection stung, and basking in the luminescence of their love when all went well. They deserved each other.

That summer before my junior year was one of the best and worse of my life. I had met my match, and lost him in the same second.

It was a stifling and balmy July afternoon as I waited for Alice at the airport. My mother was off with her new flame, while I had only just returned from visiting her old embers, who were poised with a knife and flint whenever she was ready to come strike them back to into living. I wanted to tell dad to move on, but I didn't know if he could remember how. It made me wary of my future. I might have been gregarious like my mother, but I loved like Charlie. Once was for all it took for him, and no more, no less. It was a scary thought.

Four o'clock was coming for me, and I was growing impatient, a new crop in my proverbial garden of unattractive traits. Alice valued punctuality, but Jasper was able to cajole her into forgetting the time, and sometimes her name. I was about to pull out my telephone, but a lustrous grey car pulled into the pick-up lane in front of my forest suitcase, a reminder for me of a small, blue house in a tiny town. A tall boy stepped out, gangly and thin. His movements were awkward in a white, short-sleeved undershirt tucked snugly into his corduroy pants, but he walked up to me at a hasty pace and looked at me straight.

Behind his coke bottle glasses, were eyes of green, bringing me home. The scruff on his cheeks was light, but his hair was a fro of curls, red but not.

He was the John to my Yoko at a first glance, and I knew why Charlie could never go back.

"Isabella Swan? With twelve letters total? Twelve, not bad, not bad. I'm Edward. Alice's brother."

My mind had been frazzled when he introduced himself as the long-lost brother from the Swedish boarding school that I was all but sure was made up. I gulped down my newfound nervousness, felt the scarlet fall onto the apples of my face, and answered him back with as much gall as I could muster, taking more and more after my father by the passing second. "Call me Bella, Edward."

His smile swung wide, smooth, pearly whites with no snaggles. "Ah, cut off an 'l,' and it'll be four. Four letters. Two is the square root of four. Four is my favorite number because it is the only number whose square root added or multiplied to or by itself makes the identical sum and product. To make it even more special, two is a prime number. Also, you can only reach four by adding prime numbers. If Alice didn't tell you, I love numbers. But, five is prime. Five works fine."

And so my love affair with Alice's brother, the would-be numerologist, began in an airport pick-up lane.

That day he drove me home, giving me reasons for numbers, for names and words that tied together, and obscure facts about ratios and what not. Numerology was his law. He tried to explain it to me, but I was past comprehending complex thoughts on my limited break from the local high school.

I was infatuated with everything about him, from his unorthodox persona, reminiscent of Lennon's ways, to the obsession with prime, rational, and imaginary. Edward had spoke with fervor about his numbers, but then his voice fried my soul when he struck up a tune in tandem with the radio, husky and sinful and something I needed.

"I play the piano," he had cut in, "because it has eighty-eighty keys. I like multiples of eleven because it comes from a prime. The cube root of eight is two, which is, of course, another prime number…"

He shattered me again when he told me that. My mind ran to a duet that had me hot, and more than bothered, soft new age with filthy lyrics to boot, with the even number of words he wanted in each verse. He had me wrapped around his finger, and he hadn't a clue. The numbers were endearing, a slight quirk in his brain that made for interesting conversation and fascinating discoveries. I had never met someone so immersed within something so… trivial, yet extremely extensive.

The car ride had ended too soon for my tastes, and I realized I hadn't said a word. Our talk was all him, giving me explanations for the formulas behind the way tires moved over finite land. We were at Alice's, and the twenty-minute drive had been turned into hardly less than three. I felt like I had just grown gills. I was the fish on dry land, gasping for a breath of him that I couldn't seem to hold without his help. I had been turned upside down and back again. This was the drought in my riverbed, and I think this was what I needed. Everything he was dug a shovel down, searching for the hidden stream to give me something to gulp down.

Our time came and left all too soon, but he had hit down so far that it bruised me to the bone.

Over the next couple of weeks, I got to know who this Rain Man was. Edward was brilliant. He had been spending the past year studying in Sweden, continuing for as long as the math program allowed. Edward's forte was numbers. He could divide and multiple disgustingly large digits mentally, understand the most confusing of algebra and geometry, and grasp the most impossible of concepts. This year, he would be at a private school, preparing for college. Harvard and the other Ivies had already hounded him with full scholarships that were not so hidden and riding in the wings. His future was only waiting to start.

He made me feel inadequate because we were so obviously on different planets. I wasn't stupid, but I wasn't on his level, either. My A's were splotched with more B's than he had seen in his entire life. Street smarts versus book smarts, and I would take to the streets any day. The classroom wasn't where the most important lessons were learned. But, Edward was learned on a library. We were of different calibers, but that was a thought I liked to push back into the recesses.

I was a permanent fixture around the Cullen house since my unofficial adoption last year, and that was something Edward needed time getting use to.

I had been getting my customary glass of Carlisle's iced tea, when he had found me opening the refrigerator and made candid comments to hide his discomfort, but I let Renee shine through and winked at his stuttering self. It was on rare occasions like this that I was the one with the upper hand, but he liked to play his eighty-eight keys into wee hours of the night. I lived for the sleepovers. When Alice was snoring on her pillow, sleeping soundly, I would creep down and hear him play, singing along as he went in a rich, deep bass, feeding my unholy fascination.

We had built a bit of a friendship, laying the tripod of sticks and kindling for what would someday hopefully be a roaring fire as soon as we lit the match, and gradually added larger and larger pieces of wood. It wasn't superficial, but it only went a centimeter below the skin. I knew strange things about him that others would scoff at. His obsession for all movies named after numbers, for instance – Edward loved movies with numbers within the titles: _8 Mile, 13 – _although he had yet to see it –_, 28 Days, Ocean's 11, Ocean's 12, _and_ Ocean's 13._ As a child, his favorite cartoon was Speed Racer because of the Mach 5, and he dreamed of solving crime with arithmetic and algorithms, like _NUMB3RS, _of which he was a zealous fan.

His interests were light years away from mine, and sometimes it made me think. I liked dirty comedy, Dane Cook, and raunchy HBO. _Sex in the City_ was never left unwatched. He liked a solid plot with somewhere to go. The things I did made no sense at all. I ate frigid pizza for breakfast, and drank bottled mocha light fraps in the middle of the night when the insomnia chased me out of my bed. I didn't brush my hair, and forgot to put in my sparkly retainer, a well-practiced bedtime ritual. He was rather clean cut, or so he thought.

He said I was queer in natural fibers and a love for organic, but I was raised by a hippie who couldn't remember to stock the fridge and a silent sheriff who drank Great Lakes. He mocked my white ink tattoo and called me Marilyn for the stud above my lip.

In truth, Edward was grungier than he knew, but I didn't mind. It was never a matter of cleanliness, but he dressed like an old man in pants with belts, and high socks with his Sperry's. Alice cried whenever she took in his sight, but he refused to bend, set in his ways like handprints in ancient cement. He didn't wear shorts often, but preferred corduroy pants instead. He wore the same white undershirts that were too thin, and not meant to be tucked in. He was in need of a hardy meal, and was beanpole thin. Sweden was famous for its chocolate, but only Edward would deny it, claiming that there was too much cocoa to sugar, and the piece was far from symmetrical.

He was an odd one, but I adored him for it. It was plain as day and more imminent that the setting of the sun over the sand dunes in the Arizona sky.

We flirted without shame in his strange talk of numbers and what not. We disagreed on so many things, but ended the riff with something nice. We didn't get mad, or hold grudges when the teasing was unkind. We reveled in our shared time, growing ever closer with each of the long days.

Alice, Edward, and I had been secluding ourselves in the kitchen as we waited for Jasper to complete our quartet. My number nerd of sorts was pointing at my glass and carton of chocolate milk, telling me how many different cows had contributed to the contents of the twelve-sided container, and where the design had come from. I watched with a smile, not caring what was being said, only enjoying his enthusiasm for something absurd, and arguing when he stated that less chocolate made for a tastier concoction.

"Edward, you're ridiculous. How can you not like it with more chocolate? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" I contested in mocking anger, playful and cool.

His hands latched onto his strands of red, but not, in obvious distress. "You don't understand! You need a certain ratio between the milk and the chocolate, Bella! If you put too much syrup in, it's off balance!"

I snickered a bit, and he exhaled in a huff, changing his train of talk. "Never mind, never mind. Have you ever thought about the Pythagorean theorem? It's fascinating, isn't it? That one thing squared, plus another squared, equals the third squared. I think it's amazing. Look, c'mere, c'mere. I'll draw you a picture. It's amazing when you look at it on paper. So simple, but so genius." His eyes were lit, and I couldn't refuse. I inched closer, sucked in by the tornado of thoughts and his Irish Spring scent.

Alice chimed in with a request as I drew nearer, severing my ties. "Actually, Bella and I need to talk." I glared at her, attempting to set fire to her peasant skirt with my ineffectual mind. This had become somewhat of a frequent occurrence. My savant would want to tether me to his world by extending the rope, and she would pull me back in, my unwanted anchor on the high seas, saving me from uncertainty, but prohibiting me from swimming to shore in a welcome risk I was dying to take.

I made Edward promise that he would explain to me when we came back, and he nodded from the table, using his pocket ruler to make precise grids on a yellow napkin. Following Alice into her room, I let myself fume, knowing I would forgive her sooner than I should. She entered and bounced on her feather top, locking me in a stare down taken straight from the wild, wild West.

She fired her rounds without delay, lightning fast. "If you could get by trying not to lie, things wouldn't be so confused."

"Who said I'm lying?" I shot back, already knowing that her presage of my feelings was correct. She was hurt I hadn't confided with each detail until now, but could understand that it was her brother that changed the circumstances. "I'm sure I'm not being _rude_, but it's just your attitude about this, Alice."

"I don't want you to hurt him. He's too different. I don't want him to hurt you either. I refuse to chose sides." she murmured into her lap, soft and concerned and unlike herself as she traced the blue paisley of the cotton with her smallest phalange.

I sat on the mattress, sinking into the mighty squish, fiddling with the hemp bracelet on my wrist, and biting my lip. I conceded and let the damn break. At this point, I thought, _hoped_, that nothing could go wrong, not by the unveiling alone.

"I'm in so deep, Al."

Edward never did show me his Pythagorean drawing. Alice and I had sorted things out that day, figuring out what was really processing through my insane cranium. She was a Jane of all trades when it came to taking me apart and putting me back together. She took each part of what I felt, and helped me understand just what it was. She wanted what was best for both of us, without having to stand in the middle of a crossfire where she would undoubtedly lose us both. In the end, she told me what I already knew, and we ran with it.

The middle of August had found us in a slump. We had swam until we pruned. The fireworks of the fourth had come and gone in a haze of booms of sound and bursts of light that made for the most visceral of performances. We had watched movie upon movie, agreeing that some movies got better every time, while some got worse. Our engine of ideas was running on empty, and what we needed was a muse to refill our tank. The time of break was coming to an end, and we wanted to make the most of it.

We were a solid group of four, Alice, Jasper, Edward, and I. When I first learned that Edward was a grade above Alice and I, I wasn't surprised in the slightest. But, what did have me in a tizzy was that he preferred us, the second string juniors, to his senior friends who ruled over demesnes of academia. Not that I had any qualms about his presence; it was enjoyed, regardless.

Naturally, Alice was the one to shake us from our monotony, saving us once again with her feel good ways and distaste for routine with an idea we had all agreed upon.

We were going to the amusement park.

Edward was excited to measure the angles of the roller coasters. Alice was excited to show off her original designs. Jasper was excited to spend time with Alice, and say hello to his cousin Peter who was an employee at the park. I was excited for the rush. My head was stuck in a fog of sugary sweet thoughts of a gingered boy. The notions were putting holes in my mind where he would float through and scramble my brain more often than I should allow. Adrenaline was all I needed, and I couldn't wait.

Jasper was the general, and he ran a tight ship. He was the driver, and had jurisdiction over us all. We were leaving at ten before nine to ensure we had the maximum amount of time at the park if it was to open at ten. A thunderstorm was on the distant forecast, and there was no harm in solid contingency plans.

Nine ended up being earlier than I thought, and I was out like a light. My flip had been switched, so I sat tight and let myself gain two more hours in Neverland.

I woke up sometime later, stiff, a bit foggy, aching, and in need of something to thaw myself out. It felt like someone was tickling me. I tried to stretch my arms above my head, but something was holding me down. Alice's laugh was a pealing of anarchical bells as she hosted a wily smile from the front seat that I couldn't see, but could hear in her voice. Edward was my sole companion of the backseat, so he must have had hold of my arm. He wasn't letting go, and I didn't understand why.

"Edward, what the hell, man? Let go of my arm," I mumbled, still half sleeping, and only one eighth awake, closing my lids once again.

"Shhh, go back to sleep, Bella," he laughed, and I did as he said, falling back into a world of dreaming as if I had jumped headfirst.

The second time I was jolted, I made it for good. I stretched like a cat, feline and twisting until I felt better. Alice and Jasper were navigating from the front, fighting over directions and oblivious to my awakening. Edward was watching me, smug and relaxed, as he sat twirling a black Sharpie around his piano hands.

"Are we," I broke to yawn, "there yet?" I asked, unsure of how long I had been out colder than Siberia in winter.

"We'll be there soon," he said, breathing mischief with every word. "But, in the mean time, you might want to check out your hand. There's something on it."

"There's nothing on my h–"

There _was_ something, something on both my legs, and my arms, and my collarbone.

_Numbers._

Numbers wrapping around my ankles, continuing until the limit of my light denim shorts, kissing my skin and find a way to jump to my hand, spiraling up my arm, crossing the valley of my collarbone lurking above my tank top, falling down my other arm, picking at the hem of blue, and ending on my ankle once more. My temper blazed, a solar flare on the surface of the sun. I was furious.

"Edward, what the fuck were you thinking! I'm not a piece of paper! Is this even an actual number? Oh my God, you ass!"

He nodded in a silent confirmation with escaped laughter, and added, "Twenty-two sevenths," not even fearful for his life one bit.

I was going to lunge, but seventh grade math reared its ugly head. Something he said was actually registering. "Pi? But, why pi?"

"Because… everything about you is irrational, Bella."

The air had gotten thick. His voice took a new timbre. Numbers lay forgotten as we shifted our conversation to something uncharted. "Is irrational…bad?" I asked timidly, afraid of his answer because it was the truth. I was irrational, and he was logical. He preferred reason and numbers, while I preferred to sit outside the school playing music and saying that it felt right.

He watched the History Channel while I poked fun at the narrator's voice. I consumed too much coffee while he stuck with chamomile tea. His favorite color was blue, and mine was orange, polar opposites on the color wheel, and in real life as well.

He took a trembling breath wrought with implications that I could only try to deduce the actual meaning from. "Recently, it's been my favorite kind of number. But, pi more specifically than simply irrational. Pi goes on for infinity, never repeating, always prime and special and unpredictable. Truthfully, it's quite the phenomenon."

I sighed and let the warmth swell inside my heart, pleased but also perturbed.

"Edward, that's great, but people are going to think I'm crazy with numbers all over me."

And so they did. People gave me their best stares, but it made me feel better that they were looking at the way he had marked me, the only way knew how. It was ludicrous, and didn't hold the same sentiment for him, but it soothed me. It was his brand of something else, and it made me play a toothy smile that added to the large pile of utter insanity sitting in the corner, the pink elephant that no one wanted to address.

The day had started hotter than Hades's lair. My lone fishtailed braid stuck salty against my numbered shoulder with rogue wisps curling into ringlets on my neck. I had looked at Edward and grinned. Today was most definitely _not_ the day for corduroy. We traversed the park as a pair. Alice and Jasper had split for the Space Mountain impostor right out of the gate, claiming that they wanted to beat the lines.

It was the afternoon of extravagant delight.

Lunch was caught in pieces of cotton candy during the wait for a ride. Lemon ices chilled our throats as we scurried from one end of the park to another. We were living off of sunlight and frozen chocolate bars, revelry and merriment feeding into one. Edward had marveled at the engineered brilliance, and I had awed over the teeming heights.

"Look at all this, Bella!" he had said, "Isn't it amazing? Think of all the different formulas they must've used to come up with the plans, and putting it together – oh my gosh! Can you even think about how much time it would have taken?"

However, a quarter after one had fought off the mother of blueness in a battle over the sky, and a quarter to two danced in with the herald of the storm waiting to unleash her legion of the nimbleus.

By three, the rampant tempest had hooked us in her web, but he grabbed my hand and told me to walk as fast as I could.

It came down in sheets, buckets, and splats. My numbers were bleeding black ink, the rain was hard, fast, and unforgiving. The water had found us at the top of the park, ready to ride and anxious for fun. We were fumbling now, laughing, holding hands in a warm grasp that somehow kept us steady, and if it didn't, at least we would fall together.

I wanted to run, but he told me no, citing a fact in response in a shout over the rain. "Ah, Bella! You're not supposed to run! When you run, your body exposes more of your chest to the sky, and the rain! You're supposed to walk, quickly. That way, it'll only get your shoulders! I'll draw you a picture when we get in the car!"

"Edward, I don't really think it matters at this point!" We were drenched either way, sopping and trying our best to find our vehicle.

Suddenly, he halted, jerking me back. "Screw it," he mumbled, and pulled me into a run that did no good at all.

I tried to tell him to stop before it was too late, but it was to no avail. "Edward, wait, wait, wait! Bad idea! Abort, abort!"

I slid against the slick concrete. Mr. Taylor's shoes had no traction. I was wet-thighed in surrender, and so was he. I had pulled him down with me and into our imminent demise as expected. My luck held true when we landed in a rather large puddle that may have had a fish or two swimming within it.

I laid my head back, wet and cold and pelted with rain, and closed my eyes in more than a smidgen of pain.

"I will admit… bad idea."

I gawked at him, with splattered glasses and curly head soaked from violent clouds. "No, really, Edward? I was thinking that one could win you a Nobel Peace prize or something."

A huge belly laugh rose from his mouth, shaking his thin ribs. "This isn't funny. My numbers are leaking all over me. My head hurts, too. Stop laughing!"

When he calmed, he apologized, and it was sincere. "I'm sorry about your head, Bella, and your numbers, too. I'm sorry about your numbers."

"S'okay, Eddie, but next time I won't be so forgiving." I grumbled, and massaged the knot on the back of my head. "It really hurt, you know."

He angled towards me, and replaced his nimble hands where my stubby ones use to be, rubbing softly and using great care. "I never meant to cause any pain," he said with an air of something undistinguishable.

"It's fine." I sighed and shut my eyes to hide from the rain. We laid in the puddle a little longer, with his hands in my hair and surrounded by aqua until his motions stilled.

"Don't open your eyes. Be very still," he whispered into my ear, warm in contrast, and causing a shiver. The anticipation was there, and I knew what he was going to do before I think he knew himself. I felt the same breath on my face, close to my lips, but too far away…

And then it was there, heated and perfect, and everything a kiss should be from a month of skirting around.

We made out like two stereotypical teenagers until the clouds ceased their torrent.

His lips were chapped from the sun of the day we had, but it felt right no matter what. His flesh was cotton candy and lemon ice and frozen Mars bars. It wasn't rushed, but exactly like Edward, sweet and precise.

I was sure Alice would have my head taken off with her homemade guillotine in a heated display, but I couldn't bring myself to care about Alice or the schedule. With the stopping of the rain, we finally stood, glanced at each other, and blushed on both sides. He mumbled something about the automobile without eye contact, and I nodded and followed, wholeheartedly confused.

We didn't hold hands. We didn't laugh. We ignored instead. I was upset, and hurting more now than from a simple head contusion.

The two weeks until junior year's official kick off were the clouds after the storm, calm but lacking the passion they once held. We hadn't talked since the frosty goodbye at the end of the car ride. Alice said to give him time, but I didn't want to give him time. I wanted him to snap back to the way he was before it all went awry. I wanted to him to cut out the tumor in his thought process that denied me time and time again. I ambushed his door whenever Alice welcomed me over and tried to catch him in the corner at family dinners. He was always polite, but refusing to let me in.

Honest conversation had been missing in action, cleared away by a kiss under the stormy sky. Alice made a point to seclude us into my house where we would watch more HBO until Jasper happened and took the only thing I had left. So, I got a companion to have something of my own. Her name was Mauve, and she was my pet cactus.

Talking to Mauve was cathartic, but it only reminded of how irrational I really was, a fact that Edward had not faulted to point out.

Another two weeks went by. The start of a new year, a new change, was more significant that I had hoped. It was a month without him that I had gone, and it wore me down thin. Classes that were meant to be enjoyed passed me by like highway cars versus the old truck stuck in the ditch, broken down and unable to be fixed. It was a Friday night, and it was a night for Mauve and I alone.

She needed some fertilizer, and I needed some comfort food, so I grabbed the keys to my mom's Jeep and set off for the supermarket.

I walked into the store, making my way to the row filled with sweets, and they were standing there, looking at the candy isle, with his hand in hers. My heart split into thousands of pieces, the puzzle without a box strewn for him to step on with his stupid high socks and Sperry's and coke bottle classes. But, examining him closer he had on Calvin Klein, and strange rectangle classes instead of the circular ones he always wore. She was beautiful, short and pale, blonde and blue-eyed. He laughed, and so did she. He was so different now.

I broke.

I ducked and hid in the next row, living shallow breaths that didn't fill. I had landed in front of the cards: sympathy cards that seemed to fit all to well, funny birthday wishes that should have made me feel better, and joyous love cards that did nothing but submerge me in lemon juice. It stung at me like vicious bees. He had not only found someone, but he had changed for her. He wasn't even _him_ anymore.

I did what I knew how to do in times of crisis, and called Alice.

She found me on the floor with red-rimmed eyes, but didn't pity me because she had been where I was now. She led me to the car, and took my keys. We took the direct route to my house. After the ride, she ushered me inside, telling me to sit on the couch because it wasn't going to be pretty.

She sat on the pillow to my right and told me the whole story that I didn't want to hear. "Her name is Senna. She goes to our school. She's a senior. He's her boyfriend."

It came like a wrecking ball, and I was speechless for a minute. "What am I supposed to say, Alice? Who _is_ this mysterious blonde girl who is Jude Law's ex- fiancé with the same name, only shorter? So, Edward, why were you holding her hand? Can you make her not so beautiful? It'd make me feel better, but, _this_ is the way we stand? Seriously. Seriously?"

"Well, maybe not quite like that…"

Alice laughed, and I did too, unhappy and sardonic. What began as a giggle turned into something large, a guffawing that made my stomach ache. I laughed a laugh stronger than diamonds that led me to tears. Tears that sprung a wide-cracked disaster that flooded to cleanse plagued me for hours until my well had emptied.

I had made it through the weeks that came. I wasn't happy, and I wasn't sad. I was only there, accepting something I didn't want to. They were everywhere, at Alice's, at school, at the movies, everywhere I went. We were introduced formally. She was a polite little debutante who was born in England, but grew up in Phoenix. They never had frowns, never fought, and it was made known to me that she was a serious candidate for valedictorian. She was everything that I wasn't, and it burned.

She made him so happy.

I was trying to cope, but, then, homecoming struck. Alice made me get a dress and come with her and Jasper, claiming I could dance him away with someone else I didn't know. We did the dinner, took the pictures, got gussied up, and tried to enjoy it. My dress was purple, cotton, and flowers, with my hair a braided crown, half up, half down. The decorations were tacky wands and wizards. The theme was Harry Potter, and nothing short of a spell was going to fix this night.

I supposed it hadn't been as terrible as what my preconceived notions had set for standards, but still awful, nonetheless. The punch was spiked with something rancid. The dancing was vulgar. The people were only a nuisance in my melancholy book.

That was when I saw them, in his funny white tuxedo and bowtie, and her shiny black dress.

My legs were in motion before I could tell them to stop. They planted themselves in front of the pair. Word vomit couldn't be helped. I had no bucket to catch it before it hit him in one stand of projectile, and I asked him to come talk with me. He gave me an "okay," and her a quick kiss that I tried my best to ignore. There was a gazebo to the right of the doors, and I made for it with him in my wake. Once we were there, he sat down, and I stayed standing.

"Do you love her?" I asked, my heart pounding like a voodoo drum as I was led to slaughter.

He stuttered in a daze, red-cheeked and wide-eyed, an innocence that I didn't buy. "I, I – how would one define love? It's something that's always been lost on me. I feel strongly for her, if that's what you're asking."

I put it in terms he could understand, and would never forget before I decided to leave. "Love is the square root of negative sixteen, 4_i_. It's what you know the number four is – prime, and unique, and the best. But, there's a twist. It's everything you think it is, but you have the _i_. Love is imaginary. It's not something you can see. It's abstract, indefinable, and shouldn't exist. Yet, it does. Against all odds, it's there, waiting to be factored into a grander equation than the one it came from. That, _that_ is what love is."

I left him there, on a gazebo bench in the dark, while I walked the three miles home in my gladiator's like I was an actor in a melodrama, running away from the villain once again, my tears hidden by the cover of night.

Not a half hour after I was home, there was a knock on the door, and I suspected Alice, but I was wrong. He was at my door with tussled bowtie and a pained look. "Bella, please, I –"

He pulled the key out of my sensitive grenade, and I exploded.

"You know, I'm such a fool for you! Was it, this, our what – quasi relationship, just a game for you? Another math problem, perhaps? Bella plus summer equals a fling, huh? Edward, if you're done, just, do you have to – do you have to let it _linger_?" my voice was raw and harsh and cracking like a tree ready to fall in the forest after being hacked at by the blunt axe, repeatedly.

The blunt axe had hacked me at time after time. My circulation was cut, failing arteries and collapsed lungs all coming from the clawing laceration in my chest. Every time she was there in thought or action, his blade would delve deeper under my skin.

When he made himself scare, it took its toll on me. When he was around, the hurt was identical. He was holding me captive in one way or the other, and I wanted more than anything for the ability to flee. He was a cavity in my heart, rotting holes that I couldn't fill without a complete drilling in for a full root canal. It was insane, but before, I wanted him in any way that I could, even if it was going to ruin me, bit by bit of tarnished plaque piling up on my walls. Before, I had wanted something over nothing, even if all he could give me was to dip me in plaster and use me as a bookend.

Now, my priorities were in order. I had to take care of myself instead of being blown away like dandelion seeds over something that would never grow.

"Bella…but you always really knew that I just want to be with _you_. It's only that… I can't. Not right now."

I swore. I _swore_ I would be true if it came to this, but I was wrong about our beginning. I was wrong before, and I could be now. "And, honey, so did you. You knew it even better than I did. But, that doesn't change anything, does it? I guess you could say that it doesn't add up. There's no solution. No points to put on the graph. This isn't the place where you can solve for a variable, and everything will fall into place, Edward.

"You can't solve me."

He motioned to speak, but I was done. I closed the door, and went to join my pet cactus Mauve in front of the window, filling my head with nothing but overpriced makeup on QVC, while I cried my eyes dry in front of Tahitian Baked Body Frosting and Golden Wonderwands with Lipgloss Duos. Before I went to bed, I called Charlie and made a plea, hoping he would hear me out.

The answering machine rang clear with it's own message in a bottle on Saturday morning, finally finding me after being lost in the waves, and with my swimming onto the wrong shore. Five words had been waiting for me, and they were all I needed to hear.

"Come home, Bell. Let's talk."

I bought a ticket online, and sent Alice a text to let her know I was taking off, praying she wouldn't connect the dots. I was in the midst of packing my bags when Alice burst through my door in a mad rush. "Put the sweater down, Bella." she wheezed, out of breath and crazed with a messed up coif in waves, still wet and smelling of verbena.

My voice was thick and choppy, but I choked out what I had to. "Her name is Senna, and I can't hate her. I can't hate someone who makes him so happy."

"You can, and you will! Where are you, Bella Swan? You're family, too. Get out your brass knuckles. We're going in for blood! This is not the same girl who tattooed her ribs, and got a Monroe on the same day at the very illegal, and extremely underage tattoo shop with me!" she screeched in dissidence, bringing up the memory of the physical pain so preferable to the one that only had one cure.

"It's tearing me apart. It's ruining everything. I can't, Alice. I _can't_."

She hugged me after that when I cried, helped me fit everything in my forest suitcase that I was bringing to Forks, and made me love her a little more for not asking any other questions besides if I wanted any Ben and Jerry's or not.

I slept in a fitful mess, but walking down the stairs on that Sunday morning, something caught my eye. There was a card taped to my front door that I couldn't miss if I was blind. I trudged further, already exhausted, and waiting for Renee to get up and take me to the airport. I unlocked the deadbolt, and pulled the paper off without stepping outside like the lazy girl I knew that I was.

_Graph paper._

With tremors in my hands, I unfolded the rectangle, a perfect square crafted by one set of hands that I knew were well-versed in symmetry and lines.

_[ (e)2 + (b)2 = (4i)2 ] x ∞_

I knew what it was, but I didn't know why. It would have to wait. I had a plane to catch.

* * *

Oh, walking in the rain keeps you drier? All true, my friends. _Mythbusters_ never lies. Nimbleus is another name for storm clouds, for those who were curious.

Can I say that I hate word requirements? Yes, there will be a follow up after the contest ends. They need closure. I adore Numberward too much to leave him on the brink of declaring his love through algebra. Alert me, or the story, or don't, and forget about it.

Hate to say that Numberward reminds me of myself. I squee every time I remember that my birth month is the square root of the day. I also memorized 121 digits of pi for freshman year. We only had to do 100, but I liked palindromes, so... My name is now on a plaque. Laugh at me.

Laugh and vote at the same time, though.


	2. Substitutions for the Sad

WARNING: Long ass Chatty Cathy note ahead. Feel free to skip. It's all nonsense anyway.

Equations won judge's pick for Best Written in the Geekward Shuffle Challenge! To all of you who voted for this story, or another, thank you! To the other winners, congrats, my dears! I was so flattered. There were a lot of ridiculously well written entries submitted, and I kind of teared up a little because I never in a million years thought I would win anything of importance.

I love all of you for reviewing, or reading, or liking my hot mess full of sentences that go on for forever, and ever, and ever… A generic thing to say, but each and every one of you put me in a tizzy with all your sugary words and alerts and favorites. I had to go brush my teeth.

Many thanks, and chocolate, and lots of number-y love to **winterstale** who is an adorable human being for reading this ahead of time. Everyone, _run_ to her **1982**. It's so heavily under-reviewed that I want to cry because it's better than anything my brain can come up with. It's heavy on the Emmett and Rosalie, but has a side of B-E for you purists out there. Go make her day with lots of comments and ff-love. Please? For me?

We'll talk more at the bottom, m'kay?

I do this pro bono, my friends.

* * *

The plane ride to the motherland was left without excitement or prolific experiences. I didn't meet any wise sages, or attractive men who helped me join the Mile High Club after we made flirtatious bedroom eyes at each other from adjacent seats. I sat without complaint next to a businesswoman fixated on her CrackBerry like it was the second coming. She needed some coffee and a new pantsuit, but only after a lengthy siesta under the vacation sun. She looked like I felt, frozen and exhausted and at my wits' end, with something sticking in the back of my mind like a wad of gum on the bottom of my favorite pair of high tops.

I kept Alice in the loop with a text before take off, and a promise of a message after I had landed. Her worst fears had come to life, and I wanted nothing more than to quell them like vinegar on a chemical burn. I told her to behave with Jasper, and be cordial to Edward, no matter what. Breaking apart a family as remarkable as theirs was something that would hang heavy on my conscience for decades to come. I didn't need little Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder to inform me that the swamp of guilt would submerge me completely if anything were to arise between brother and sister.

Even so, Alice as my advocate blew a balloon of feelings full of warmth and comforting helium to fill the crater. Her value to me would always remain unnamed. Alice, my angelic guardian cherub, was worth the universe and then some.

The canyon that Edward had blown apart with his homemade nitroglycerin stretched from the hairs on my head to the balls of my feet, but centered in the muscle under my ribs. Instead of made from soap and rendered fat, Edward had combined himself with someone so wrong, a toxic combination for him and me both. Although, he couldn't see how she had sculpted him into something that didn't belong. He was too much paint on a cluttered canvas. Senna may have thought herself an artist, but she was an amateur, ruining simplicity with designer labels and pricy glasses. I had spotted it the very first time with the lollipops and jellybeans as my witnesses. He owed it to himself to at least have someone embrace him as he came, someone who cherished his idiosyncrasies and the touch of OCD.

I loathed saying it in thought and reality, but he needed someone like me.

The short hours flying high were over with the pages of a book, a love story that made me want to jump from the emergency exit. But stepping off the plane, I was welcomed by pine trees and fern greens, and it was worth it. I breathed slow and long, reveling in the sensations in my lungs that weren't something unpleasant, the first time in ages, or so it felt.

I was finally back where I belonged.

Comparing Washington to Edward was a mistake. Edward would never be able to compete with the overabundance of oxygen and unyielding sense of security the blanket of foliage provided for me. The steadfast and ever-present woodland space was one, giant, jade Addy for my chaotic personality. Soothing and therapeutic, I loved the effect on my central nervous system.

Forks was an overlooked town, taken to be too small and too boring, but it was my memories lay, where my friends and family continued to remain. Leaving with my mother was a decision I would never be able to regret, but what I left behind had kept me weighted down with a slew of baggage that I would hang onto with my life. I wouldn't say that I would spend the rest of forever in the tiny sect, but a commute from Seattle was a prospect I couldn't wait to explore.

The Port Angeles airport was the size of a shoe, and a half hour later, I was through the gates and in front of the Crown Victoria cruiser being greeted by the sensible half of my parental duo. Charlie had taken to separation like an indigenous species competing with something from over seas. Divorce was unwelcome in his habitat, disrupting the peace of a somewhat stable life, but he had survived the series of battles against the lawyers and settlements.

How they came to be as husband and wife was a paradox if I had ever seen one. Renee and Charlie were never meant to be. She was fuchsia, and he was amber, her ostentatious and a bit gaudy, and him rich and wrought with the thickness of routine. But, the side effect of their whirlwind romance, my childhood, was more than swell in the end. I would rather be alive with two that were less than cohesive, versus the alternative world where I didn't exist.

Charlie and Renee's story of unexpected love was one I had heard more than once growing up in a fragrant cedar rocking chair. Charlie would tell me before the lady of the night claimed me with the Sandman's help how the prettiest girl in all of Washington agreed to be his other half. I would sit on his knee, treating every word as if it were the last I would hear, and imagining the tips and turns of their courtship and marriage into one chivalrous tale of knights and damsels in distress, as second grade girls often do.

The way I remembered Charlie talking about Renee sprung leaks in my tear ducts faster than I could shut off the memory's valve. He would tell me that the summer of '89 was full of something so magic, Shakespeare, and fairies, and the essence of attraction. As a girl of seven or eight, some of the meaning splashed to the side of my brain's basin in a narrow miss that was waiting for me to mop up as an adolescent of nearly seventeen. Looking back on that story, I could almost feel the bashing waves of First Beach on iced toes, and the misty air between the conifers as they grew together.

Charlie hugged me tight and kissed my kissed my head in a welcome gesture. We didn't speak, but we didn't need to. Charlie knew me like a book he had read cover to cover. With a face for every page, he could index my mood better than he could cast a fishing pole. When I wanted to talk, he could tell, but my mom chugged over me like a giant-sized rolling pin. Renee chattered like a hummingbird's wings that never took a break. She was a breed of shark that had to keep swimming through the pointless conversation and pertinent news alike in order to keep herself from sinking to the bottom of the speechless sea. That fact alone never boded well with me. In her presence, I was a tiny boat amongst the rocky ocean, riddled with unease, and fighting to keep my head above the surface.

The drive to our tiny blue house was an hour of silence that left a lozenge on my scratchy throat of recent experiences. Miles under the tires flew by, and with every one we got closer to our final stop. The constant aching in my knees foretelling the imminent rain was back with a vengeance, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. I sent Alice an SMS that said I was alive and thriving in the place of my birth, and she sent me back that I was one lucky bitch for getting out of the trig exam. We texted about my flight and how I regretted to inform her of the absence of eye candy in rows A through L. I already missed my spitfire of a best friend, and I had yet to make it back to my humble abode.

The clock must've jumped at least three-quarters of an hour because we were there before I could bat an eye. I sprang from the cruiser as if the murderer was hot on my coattails, and made for our front entryway. The robin egg shutters and cobalt siding culminating with a simple white door was enough to lift my spirits with the visions of myself aged back ten years on the same sidewalk.

Charlie chuckled as he slammed our doors, and gifted me the key when he reached the steps. "Go on, open it," he laughed at my childish impersonation of little Bella from not so far back.

So, I opened the white door with the brass knob, and stepped inside.

The funny violet couch was the same as it had been in the month of July, and the daffodil walls still shone bright like the faraway sun. Renee was in every room, whether Charlie wanted to admit it or not. I was hardly in a place to give away tickets of blame, however, as the graph paper note burned a hole in my denim pocket wherever I went. Charlie and I were one in the same, both trying to hold onto a handful of H2O that would evaporate into nothing but an invisible vapor.

It was good to be home, regardless of the what, why, and who.

We had a quiet dinner of pasta and sauce because if everything else had to be complex, at least something didn't. I sat and twirled my spaghetti, and tried to think of what I was going to do when I got back into the land of the brown sand, but that made me fidget like I had crickets in my jeans. Charlie gave me an eye, so I combed my mind for something that wasn't going to make me anxious of getting back on another plane.

The leftover part Sunday night was spent by myself in a mess of Forks-induced euphoria after I had banished the gingered boy in Phoenix from my mind. I slept in my twin bed with indigo sheets like a baby who had never known a nap, long and hard and completely dreamless. But, the next morning it was ten past noon when I had stirred, and sooner than I would have hoped, the inklings of a fractured organ came at me again, restless and untamed. Alice's number-obsessed and carrot-topped brother had crept back into my head, but the memories were less than fondant and royal icing this time.

Charlie made for his station before I had woken. The house was a desert, even with a small tumbleweed or two that I may have imagined in my state. Somehow, I had never been here alone. Renee liked to flutter around the kitchen, and when she wasn't around, Charlie was. This past June and July, Rolly and Emmett glued themselves to my hip when Charlie was working overtime. Timers and pans had worked 'round the clock with incessant beeps and buzzes and clangs. Now pins could drop, and the world would hear. It was unsettling to be so isolated in a place that had always exuded life.

Left to my own devices, I wallowed.

Days blended into nights, and it was if I had fallen down the rabbit hole. I was in a world created by an author that wasn't real, but wasn't untrue. I got up in the morning, planted myself in front of Charlie's Sony, and had at it. I may have eaten all of the ice cream sandwich ice cream from very bottom of the freezer, but I couldn't be sure of anything much. For the first forty-eight hours, Charlie was sympathetic to my situation, but eighteen past that, he had reached his limit.

He had walked in front of his television, and pressed the power button, as my attempts to stop him bounced off like pointless darts. He crossed his arms and stared me down from my perch on the couch with enforced authority that I was almost afraid of. "Bell? It's been three days straight of Suze Orman, QVC, and infomercials. If she says Laura Geller Makeup Studio one more time… I'm worried, especially because I'm housing a truant student right now. This had got to end. Since when do you run away from things?"

I drew the duvet around my torso as a shield that did no good against his words. "Since I named and began talking to my pet cactus, and he started wearing rectangle rims," I mumbled in distaste.

Charlie was amused, but I wasn't. "A pet cactus, really? What did you name it?" I sent him my glare that was anything but entertainment, and he sighed a sad sound. "I don't know what the rest of that means, but you have to stop bottling this type of stuff up, Bell. It's not healthy."

The obvious had not escaped me, but it still picked at my unhealed scabs. "Her name is Mauve," I defended. "And, Insomnia isn't healthy either, but I don't have to fix that, do I?"

Charlie took his seat across from mine on a worn recliner, let me in on the plan, and ended with a request. "That's next on our list. Trust me. We're getting there. Tell me what's going on."

With a shattering breath, I admitted it to him, and to myself. "I forgot how to love, Charlie, and he says that he can't remind me." I shut my lids, and squeezed so hard that it hurt, but I wasn't going to open them only to let a river of salted fluids drip down my cheeks. Moments later, I felt a warm appendage around my shoulders and a transferring of weight, so I leaned into my father's flannel with no other choice.

"You'll remember when you need to, Bell. You're gonna be okay," he murmured into my ear, and I did my best to believe him. We stayed statue-like for five minutes at most, but it was enough to throw down a ladder and airlift me out of my underground tunnel. After I was able to let my corneas see the light of day again, Charlie asked. "Is that it?"

I sniffled a bit, but answered him with the first truthful thing that came to mind. "Yeah, that and I talk to my cactus and can't sleep. I'm going to call Rolly later today, have her talk some sense into me."

Charlie raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment like I thought he would. "Say hi to her for me, and those simple things are easy to fix." His smile was embarrassed, but what he said next had me flustered. "Did you know I had a pet rock until eighth grade? At least yours is alive…"

An eruption of giggles followed like hot molten lava, and it was honest. My laughter was out of practice, but it was like riding my bike after months of disuse. I hadn't forgotten how to use it completely.

A course of action formed in my brain, and the premier move was to locate my cellular device and call Rosalie after a nice, hot shower that would surely scald my epidermis all the way off. I washed my body free of days of stagnant grime from the sofa, and my mind of televised shopping with a sugar scrub, pouf, and hopes of what was to come this evening. It went without words that I was in for an afternoon to remember. I was sure that the pigeon express was the safest route to organize it with the way Rolly was, but I surmised that letting her know I was back home with a phoning would be a decent start.

Once I was squeaking with cleanliness and dry as Renee's pound cake, I dialed Rolly's number and was met with her boisterous voice. "Baby! To what do I owe the pleasure of this wondrous phone call?" she cooed into the receiver, pleasant and cheerful and peppermint tea for my heart.

I could see her through the electronic waves with jeweled cat eyes and oven mitts equipped with a grin the size of Texas. It set a similar reaction on my own face, and I couldn't help but match her joviality with a tone of sheer delight. "Hey, Roll! I'm in town. Feel like ditching school tomorrow?"

The faint crashing of a pan made the background complete, and she screamed her response into my broken eardrum like a crazed concert enthusiast. "Why didn't you call me sooner! You're ridiculous. Of course I feel like ditching school! Emmett's coming for you right now. How long do we have?"

True to Rolly form, approximately nine minutes, and one half of a Fluff and Nutella sandwich later, a Wrangler the size of my mudroom with a gentle giant operating it peaked into my drive, and shut the engine. I pranced out the door in a flurry of excitement. Where there was a Rolly, there was an Emmett doing her dirty work. She was too loud, and he was too shy. Unlike Charlie and Renee, they were two peas from the same pod, both shining with a blindingly bright canary yellow representative of their happy-go-lucky selves. He did whatever she asked, and she returned the favor tenfold in baked goods and warmth. They defined mutual symbiosis.

Rolly and Emmett met on the bus, and ten minutes later they introduced themselves to the chief and I. Impressed by my police escort, they befriended the duckling I used to be with no questions asked. We shared birthdays, and holidays, and the same frustration when Emmett hadn't gotten a Furby for Christmas. Rolly was there for training bras and awkward inquisitions, and Emmett stood his ground against the hoards of pervy teenage boys whenever he was needed.

While Rolly was larger than Jupiter, Emmett was Pluto. He hid behind Rosalie, but wasn't forgotten in the end. As a preschooler, he had a stutter that followed him into kindergarten and through second grade. Kids were mean, but Rolly was vicious. It didn't matter that she was shorter than them, or a little pudgy with thick glasses. When Tyler Crowley had first mentioned that there was something abnormal with Em on a Friday afternoon at the reading table, Rolly set in with cavalry in tow.

Six weeks from that day, she sat in the principal's office for stealing crayons, and pouring glue in hair, and pants-ing poor Tyler in front of the entire second grade. No one bothered Emmett after that. Rolly had instilled the fear of God into anyone who dared to cause trouble with him, her, or me. Emmett outgrew his stutter, but never his mannerism for only speaking when something needed to be said. Whenever Emmett had something to say, people listed, or else they would miss it like a leaf scattered by the wind.

Emmett had greeted me with a hug off the floor that cracked my spine with quiet enthusiasm, and, for one minute, everything was back to how it was before Arizona stole me for a mirage of experiences, both good and bad. We were two musketeers meeting the third for musketeer things like our former ambitious youths using training wheels and singing in Thanksgiving pageants.

"We missed you, baby," he said softly as he put my two feet back on solid ground, but leaving a limbering arm tight around my narrow shoulders.

I glanced up the mountain, and repeated the sentiment with fervency from finding his pool of sustenance in my wasteland. "I missed you too, Em, but we need to get going. Rolly's going to have a heart attack if we don't get there soon."

* * *

One day… one day, I will learn to be a serious author and write without Fight Club references.

Thanks for making it to the end of Lovesickella and Numberward's second installment. Originally, this was only the first half of the chapter, but it ended up being cut off here instead. I would have liked to give you more, but in the long run, you will most likely be getting fifteen or so chapters instead of three. Fair trade? Oh, and we will be getting an M rating later for some shennanigans.

Ice cream sandwich ice cream is real, by the way. It's also tasty, and mildly addictive. Okay. Pluto got demoted. It's a dwarf something or other now. I know, I know. I was sad, too. Oh, and another fun fact - did anybody catch that cold medicine doesn't even help in that last chapter? Yeah, FDA recall. They don't help colds, and hey, they make behavioral disorders worse. Oh, the irony.

I'm slightly curious. Numberward sent a numerical one to five-lettered Bella, but has anybody ever sent a love note to you?


End file.
